"We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand" (Updated x2)

I've tried to make something of a cottage industry of correcting the record when people get quotations wrong, or where quotations simply have not been verified sufficiently to warrant their use. The quotation in the headline is widely attributed to James Watt. The ultimate source of the quotation was Austin Miles, who wrote that Watt said it an some point on a PTL Club broadcast (Update: actually it was a different quotation that Miles claimed from the PTL Club--this one I think Hellena Handbasket pegged as a Miles paraphrase).

We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.
-- James Watt, (attributed: source unknown)
(positiveatheism.org)

Source unknown? No big deal! We'll use it anyway.

James Watt is quoted as having said, “We don’t have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.”
(Sunshine Cathedral-MCC)

Well, yeah, Watt is quoted as having said that. I suppose phrasing it that way gets the author off the hook for perpetuating a falsehood, if it happens that Miles' recollections were in error.

"We don't have to protect the environment -- the Second Coming is at hand." - James Watt
(The Quote Page at Mawek.com)

This is my favorite part: "This page is maintained by Marco van den Broek Last update: 18 January 1996." Some wouldn't call that "maintained."

In the meantime money is being wasted on books and movies ("Left Behind"), there's fear-mongering, and justification for trashing the environment because Jesus will be returning soon ("We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.” - James Watt, Former (US) Secretary of Interior, Washington Post, May 24, 1981).
(Kickin' the Darkness)

Interesting that atheists and my fellow Christians are among the most eager to dump on Watt, each falling short of their responsibility to verify the information they're spreading (I made a comment to this blog, asking for a correction).

JAMES WATT, former Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan, was famous for the following statements – “I don’t know how many future generations we can count on until the Lord returns.”

“We don’t have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand.”

“After the last tree is felled, Christ will come back”

We Christians live in hope. But this is NOT the hope we live in. Such views negate the creation, rather than cherish what God has given us. It reminds me of a child that destroys a toy it has been given in hopes it will be replaced with a better one.

(christiansforthemountains.org)

Two out of three of the quotations are bogus. Not a very good percentage.

James Watt (Secretary of the Interior)

"We don't have to protect the environment, the Second Coming is at hand."*

(adultthought.ucsd.edu)

Note the asterisk. It leads to a blurb a long way off at the bottom of the page: "*Statement made on live national television." I doubt it, but I'd like to know more. They couldn't have used as a source the Web site I noted here, I hope. I sent a message to these folks, also. I may stick with this group. They're getting published on a .edu site under the auspices of (if I'm not mistaken) the University of California San Diego. Probably a state school that receives government funding ... and they don't appear to practice religious neutrality. I wonder how principled is their stand on church/state separation?

That's one page worth of Google hits, and I think that's all for now.


Update: Got my asterisks mixed up on the Adultthought entry. The asterisk led to the identification of Watt rather than to a claim that the words were spoken on live national television (though coincidentally I've seen that claim made about dubious quotations of Watt).

Update 2: The "Kickin' the Darkness" blog did the next best thing to adding a correction to the bad data. They rewrote the blog post to omit it.


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